Re: project management info

[scot <scot -at- HCI -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

>On Wed, 29 May 1996, Stephen Victor wrote:
>> However, when your students leave the ivy-covered walls of the academy,
>> it's quite likely they'll have to use a number of different platforms,
>> even (shudder!) PCs. In deliberately excluding Windows applications from
>> your classes, you could be doing your students a disservice.

>My job is to teach Project management and to teach them to handle tools
>which gets their jobs done quickly and efficiently. I have a very tight
>schedule of lectures and cannot afford totinker with things that do not
>work - whatever the real world situation.  The usual position is that
>students are quite familiar with the PC platform and probably most of
>them have not even seen the Mac platform - so that when they see me
>working effortlessly with the Mac they get intrigued. I ask them to try
>the PC platform tools in their spare time - and by the time of the next
>lecture theey are ready to shify to the Mac for the project management
>work having being completely flumoxed by the lack of power in the PC
>platform projct management software that they have played around with.

If you are teaching primarily P.M. --principles-- that's another matter ,
but then you still should not encourage your students to adopt a technology
that 99% of them will not use in their workplace.

So, for political or at least personal preference reasons, you introduce
your students to a technology and encourage them to adopt it where possible.

Then they leave your academy and go to work for <Big corporate Ltd> and must
learn to use tools on a platform that you have taught them to spurn? How
does that prepare them for a working future? A graduate of another academy
where they teach on the PC platform has the upper hand in job
competitiveness because, all other things being equal, they are more
familiar with the most common platform around.

"Quickly and efficiently" means different things in different environments.
Usually it means "within the resources allocated" and this resource is
usually not the platform you're teaching on. <Big Corporate Ltd> ain't gonna
replace a $1500 PC with a $7000 Mac (Australian Prices) just because their
new graduate employees are marginall faster with it, or are convinced this
is the only platform to use for Project Management.

Secondly, I think you're rationalisation is just that -- a rationalisation
for making a certain decision over an emotional issue.  PC project
management tools are just as effective as the Macintosh. Half the time they
are the same software anyway. The user interface on modern versions of
Windows (ie Win95, NT 4.0) are just as "good" as the Mac OS.

I hate Microsoft too. But I have to live in and with the world and this
means using Windows and considering that it by overwhelming odds, has won
the PC desktop wars and accepting that Mac, X-window and OS/2 are but bit
players in that (desktop) arena.

So instead of forcing your students to re-learn technology, I would consider
taking hte time and learning the approriate software yourself so you can
better equip your students for the future.


just my 0.02,

scot
(a real world TW project manager)
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